trained from the very beginning; how Aunt Francesca had insisted upon
mathematics, Latin, and chemistry, as well as literature, history, and
modern languages.

He had protested to her only once. She had replied kindly, but firmly,
that while broad culture and liberal education might not, in itself,
create an artist, yet it could not possibly injure one. Since then, he
had seen precocious children, developed in one line at the expense of
all others, fail ignominiously in maturity because there was no
foundation. The Child Wonder who had thrilled all Europe at nine, by his
unnatural mastery of the violin, was playing in an orchestra in a Paris
cafe, where one of the numerous boy sopranos was the head waiter.

How disappointed Aunt Francesca must be, even though she had too much
self-control to show it! And his father! Allison swallowed a lump in his
throat. After a lifetime of self-sacrificing devotion, the Colonel had
seen all his efforts fail, but he had taken the blow standing, like the
soldier that he was. In vain, many a time, Allison had wished that some
of his father's fine courage might have been transmitted to him.

And Rose--dear Rose! How persistently she held the new way open before
him; how steadily she insisted that the creative impulse was higher than
interpretative skill! How often she had reminded him of Carlyle's
stirring call: "Produce, produce! Though it be but the merest fraction
of a fragment, produce it, in God's name!" He had noticed that the
materials for composition were always close at hand, though she never
urged him to work.

He had come gradually to depend upon Rose--a great deal more than he
realised. Quite often he perceived the truth of the saying that "a blue-